Never Rest

Summary

Nineteen-year-old Jake Margate has had terminal leukemia for five years and is ready to let go but his mother has other ideas. She’s found a rogue doctor pursuing radical treatments and takes her son to a remote institute where he does seem to get better...at first. But then the treatment begins to fail in strange ways just as Jake begins to fall for another of the test subjects. Slowly, he realizes he’s been turned into something truly horrible. Two-timeLambda Literary Award-winning author Thornton has written a contemporary queer twist on the Frankenstein monster story.

"With a deft touch, Thornton takes his dark premise—a dying boy whose mother will do anything capable of offering a shred of hope—and spins a coming-of-age story suffused with chilling darkness. Jake's voice as a boy confronted with a dire illness, facing down a potential love that may come at too high a cost, charms with genuine notes that don't fade even as the story twists further into the macabre. Thornton treads a fine line between horrific and coming-of-age, and doesn't once misstep." - 'Nathan Burgoine, author of Light and Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks

"Never Rest injects new life into the gay Bildungsroman with his dark yet wry tale; dying boy meets dying boy has never been rendered so well." - Steve Berman, author of Vintage: A Ghost Story

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Never Rest - Marshall Thornton

of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfi lm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in 2018 by Lethe Press, Inc. at Smashwords.com

www.lethepressbooks.com • lethepress@aol.com

ISBN 978-1-59021-684-2

Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design: Marshall Thornton

"No man chooses evil

because it is evil;

he only mistakes it for happiness,

the good he seeks.’’

MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN

ONE

Iwas ready. It was time to go. I was embarking on a journey to the great beyond; I was passing over; biting the big one; crossing rainbow bridge; meeting my maker; kicking the bucket; cashing in my chips; pushing up daisies or some other trivial euphemism for the thing that could not be spoken. I’d packed my emotional baggage and was set. All I needed to do was say a few goodbyes—preferably without using any euphemisms or even the word goodbye—and that was that. Well, except for the waiting. Though, I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be much more of that. Finally.

Almost five years ago, right before I turned fifteen, people stopped asking what I wanted to be when I grew up because it was obvious I wasn’t going to. That’s when I got my diagnosis. Acute blah-blah-blah leukemia. That’s what I heard, anyway. The words that doctors use in those situations have way too many syllables making them almost impossible to remember. I think that’s a marketing tool. Like, if you can’t really remember what it is you’re sick with you have to go back to the doctor and pay them to tell you again. Not that my mom didn’t call back that same afternoon and hound the secretary until she got the right name and spelling so she could google the crap out of acute blah-blah-blah leukemia.

A battle. People like to call it a battle. I battled cancer for nearly five years. The battle went something like this: chemo, chemo, chemo, recovery from chemo, disappointing results, chemo, chemo, more recovery, unofficial remission, nosebleeds, dizzy spells, anemia, remission denied, clinical trial, chemo, chemo, chemo, a slowing of the disease process, chemo, chemo, a speeding up of the disease process, chemo, chemo, chemo, trying to get well enough to have more chemo and who knows what’s next. Well, I know what’s next. Surrender. The battle ends.

It’s a lame battle if you think about it. One that takes place while sitting in waiting rooms reading magazines, in comfy reclining chairs with hanging bags of clear toxic fluids slowly dripping into you, bouts of vomiting, endless days of reality TV—the marathon days are my favorites—hair loss, weight loss, edema, weight gain, books started but not finished, bruises where the nurse hunted for veins that refused to be found, bruises where nothing happened at all, college classes attempted and withdrawn from, parental tears hidden in the night. No, if it was really a battle, I would have gotten to punch someone. And I would have liked to punch someone. At least at the start.

We’re going to fight this, was the first thing my mother said on diagnosis day. We sat, a little stunned—maybe a lot stunned—in her supermom-ish Toyota Rav-4 on the fourth floor of a parking garage that seemed to be made completely of concrete, soot, and chewed bubble gum. I wanted to accuse her of being unoriginal. I mean the line was straight off basic cable. But what was she going to say?

You know what? Let’s give up. Why don’t I cash in my 401K, and we’ll go to Vegas and spend the money gambling and drinking and hiring escorts.

Actually, that would have been a lot more fun than the way things went.

I’m telling this completely bass-ackwards. Let me start again. My name is Jake Margate. Jake is not short for Jacob or any other name. It’s my actual name. Don’t ask me why. I live with my mom right outside of Chicago in Niles, Illinois. I’m almost twenty. I’ve had acute blah-blah-blah leukemia for nearly five years.

Wait, I said that already. Shit.

Anyway, the doctors are super proud of themselves that I’ve lived this long. My blast cells were through the roof when I was diagnosed, and the end of my road was supposed to happen almost two years ago. Every extra day I spend binge-watching America’s Top Model is a victory for my doctors.

You see, they, too, are battling cancer. They charge in, the good guys in white coats, discussing the merits of this poison or that poison, and then they fill me up with whichever one is most touted in some obscure medical journal which may or may not have been paid by the maker of said nasty poison to tout said nasty poison. They ask how I am but never hear anything more than how my symptoms have changed. Which ones are new? Which ones are side effects from the treatment? Which ones have left or returned or never gone away? They prescribe something new and then charge out of the room.

Honestly, I don’t feel like I’m battling cancer. But I do feel like a battlefield.

At the end of my last doctor’s visit, they didn’t prescribe anything but morphine. A lot of morphine. They asked to see me alone. I’m an adult now, after all, and I don’t need my mommy there to hold my hand. Totally in character, my mom refused to leave the room. So they asked me to leave.

It might have been amusing if I hadn’t figured out what they were saying to her. They were telling her I was going to die soon, and she needed to prepare me. She needed to prepare herself. I guessed that the plan was to give her a wake-up call and then have me come back in to speak to them alone. But that isn’t the way it worked out. After a few minutes, my mother stormed out of the office and announced we were leaving.

Um, I think they wanted to tell me something.

They’re not telling you anything. I fired them.

"But. They’re my doctors. Shouldn’t I decide—"

It’s my insurance. I pay the co-pays. I fired them.

I was nauseated. And by that, I mean nauseated in a completely different way than the way chemo nauseates you. This was emotional nausea. Pure puke-inducing emotion. Something was going terribly wrong, and I didn’t know how to stop it.

I’ve wandered off again, haven’t I? I’m not sure if that’s a symptom or a side effect. I’m hoping it’s one or the other. I’d hate for it to be my personality. Okay, what was I was saying?

My dad. My dad lives in Park Ridge with his new wife. Park Ridge is one suburb and two or three income levels away from Niles. My mother hates him and, though she would never ask it, wants me to hate him, too. The way she acts, you’d think he cheated on her with Amelia—that’s my stepmom—but he didn’t. They didn’t even meet until my parents had been divorced for a year. No, for my mom, it was a much bigger betrayal. He became a success.

When she married my father, he was a struggling musician who supported himself doing temporary office work and random computer stuff. In fact, they met in the bank where my mother was an executive assistant—where she’s still an executive assistant. Some of this has always been a little fuzzy, but I think they dated a little, she got pregnant, and they decided to do the right thing and get married. Even when I was a little kid, I could see that doing the right thing was often completely the wrong thing.

My mom wanted my dad to make something of himself, in particular something that had a decent income attached. She’s not the greedy sort, though. She’s the nervous sort and has the idea that money makes you safe. Unfortunately, my dad steadfastly refused to do anything of the kind. According to her, every good thing that happened to them when they were married was my mother’s doing, and it’s true she organized our moving out of a one-bedroom apartment in Roger’s Park and into a small brick two-bedroom house with a collapsing garage on an eighth of an acre in Niles.

Occasionally unemployed and still trying to get weekend gigs at Chicago pubs, my father was less and less the man of my mother’s dreams. She finally threw him out when I was around eight. I have no idea what the last straw was. He probably lost a job or quit a job or decided to go to Milwaukee for a few weeks with his band to play some gigs. I don’t know. And as much as my mom likes to rant about what a loser my dad used to be, she leaves out a lot of specifics.

After she threw him out, as though to spite her, my dad promptly invented some bit of software that helped lawyers track their billing down to the quarter-cent. Money began to roll in like a tidal wave, and very soon he acquired my stepmom, her two little kids, and a five thousand square foot home in Park Ridge where I spent my weekends roaming around trying to avoid my steplings. When I was thirteen, my dad and Amelia had a set of twins all their own: fraternal, boy and girl. I thought the whole Yours, Mine and Ours thing was kind of a drag, and I managed to find excuses not to see them for a while. My dad seemed not to mind much—he was busy, after all—but then I got acute blah-blah-blah leukemia, and he wanted me to call him every day. Something I never got good at.

My iPhone rang and a semi-embarrassing picture of my dad playing a gig with his band of semi-pathetic middle-aged dudes popped up. I put Project Runway All Stars on mute and accepted the call.

Hey buddy, he said.

Hey.

How’s today? People had started to avoid asking me how I felt too directly.

Shitty. My usual answer was better than yesterday but there are only so many years you can tell that lie.

Yeah. Listen, I’ve been thinking about something. You know the money I put aside for your college?

He’d been nice enough to sock some money away for me in a college fund. But I’d barely touched it. I’d tried a couple of cheap classes at Oakton but couldn’t show up often enough to figure out what they were about. I did better with an online course I took but, seriously, what was the point?

Yeah?

Maybe you should use that money for anything you want.

Oh, yeah. Thanks. I was ready. I’d stopped wanting things. And I was pretty sure they didn’t let you bring money where I was going.

So, what do you think you want? Do want to buy something? How about a computer? Yours is ancient. Or a new car? He’d already given me Amelia’s old Sedona van which I never drove anyway and not just because it was a totally humiliating vehicle. I mean a minivan was the worst, but I would have been happy to be humbled if I’d had the energy to turn the steering wheel.

He left a long pause. I knew he wanted to play a private, father-son episode of Make-A-Wish, but I seriously wasn’t up to it. I knew what I wanted, and I knew he couldn’t help me with it. Or could he?

Look Dad, there is something you could do for me.

What’s that?

Get Mom to let go.

Let go? Of you?

Yeah. It’s time.

He was silent for a really long time.

Oh Jake, I don’t know. Your mom never lets go of anything. And this is a pretty tall order. You mean the world to her.

Can you try?

Are you sure it’s time? Maybe you’re just feeling a little down. That would be understandable. You’ve been through—

I’m the only one who’s going to know when it’s time, Dad. And it’s time.

For a little bit, I didn’t know if he was going to say anything at all. All right. If that’s what you want, he said with all the enthusiasm of the condemned. You mean the world to me, too. I didn’t mean to make it sound—

It’s okay. I get it.

He had spares. My mom didn’t. We all knew my dying—I mean, my imminent departure—sucked most for my mom. But that didn’t mean it didn’t suck for my dad. It just meant it sucked for him with a houseful of kids. And that seemed easier than the way it was going to suck for my mom with an empty house. A spare bedroom was no consolation for losing a son.

I said goodbye to my dad and clicked off. I’d just asked him to help my mom understand that it was going to be soon. A lot of people would have bawled their eyes out for a good hour or two. I just unmuted the TV and fell asleep. I mean, it wasn’t like anything really important had just happened. It wasn’t like I’d lost a cooking competition or been booted off an island. So, really, I couldn’t see the point of crying. I was going to die.

There, I said it. I was going to die which made me exactly like everyone else in the world. There was just one difference: I was ready.

TWO

If you think I was depressed or sad or even unhappy, you’re wrong. If anything I was kind of relieved. Dying of a terminal illness is like a trip to Detroit. You hear all these terrible things, and you really don’t want to go, but when you get there, it’s not as bad as you thought it would be. And, if you’re thinking my plan was to off myself you’d be wrong. I didn’t want to be spoon-fed a concoction of applesauce and morphine, leaving my mom to face the ire of some heartless prosecutor. All I wanted to do was give up and let it happen. I was ready for nature to take its course. A one-hundred percent certified organic death. That’s all I wanted.

My mother, however, had other ideas. She got home at her regular time, which was about three episodes from the end of that day’s Project Runway All Stars marathon. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to win. The girl with the tattoos was probably the most talented, at least at making clothes on a deadline, but the guy with the flat black hair and the disks in his ears—

I have really good news, my mother said when she walked into my room. I muted the TV that sat on a set of shelves at the foot of my bed, which was a hospital bed my Mom got second or third or fourth hand. The mattress was lumpy but it adjusted so I could semi-sit or lie down, whichever I felt like. The other things in my room were a desk I never sat at; a bureau crammed with clothes I’d worn in junior high school; and a hamper where we put my sheets after I sweat through them at night. The room was still painted dark blue with yellow stars on the ceiling. We’d painted it that way when I was about eleven. I hated it by the time I was thirteen but didn’t want to tell that to my mom. I was working my way up to asking if we could repaint about the time I got my diagnosis. Other things seemed more important after that.

Did Dad call you? I asked, hoping the good news had something to do with what he was supposed to talk to her about but also not expecting it would.

Yes. Well, no. He left a message. I know exactly what he wants to talk to me about so I’m not calling him back.

You do? You know?

He said he had something important to tell me about you. That can only mean one thing. Really, Jake, I’m a little offended you couldn’t tell me yourself. And why you’d tell your father before you told me—

What do you think I’m going to tell you?

You know I’ll love you no matter what.

Oh my God. I’ve screwed this up again, haven’t I? I need to stop and explain. I’d never actually come out to my mom. I knew I was gay and she knew I was gay but we didn’t talk about it because I wouldn’t. Absolutely refused. Every time she hinted or teased or even posed a direct question, I shut her down. And maybe that was mean but I was jealous. You see, as soon as I got cancer, there was another boy on the scene. A boy I call Other Jake.

He was the Jake who never got cancer, or worse, the boy who beat cancer. He was the Jake who instead of lying around the house being chemo sick for weeks on end was out and proud at fifteen. Other Jake told his mom and dad he was gay and, well, anyone else who’d stand still for more than thirty seconds. Other Jake joined the Gay/Straight Alliance at school and was almost immediately elected president. Other Jake fought with the principal over a T-shirt he wore to school that said, You can’t pray the gay away. Other Jake went to prom with the nicest boy who was tall with dark hair and gorgeous dark eyes. Other Jake was wicked smart and read classic books even when teachers didn’t assign them. Other Jake was going to a good college and planned to major in Queer Studies or maybe Political Science. Most of all, Other Jake was healthy.

And my mom adored him. Honestly, I think I had a little crush on him too. But I knew early on that Other Jake wasn’t ever going to be real. So I didn’t come out to my mom because it felt like I might be leading her on, teasing her with something that couldn’t be, encouraging her to love Other Jake when she really shouldn’t.

Mom—

"Don’t make me be the one to say it. This is your moment, Jake. You need to say it. She pulled the chair from my desk over to the bed and looked at me intently. When I didn’t say anything, she went on. Everything is going to be okay. Nothing’s going to change."

This isn’t what I wanted Dad to talk to you about.

This what, dear? Go ahead. You can say it. You’re...

You think I’m coming out? That’s what you think, isn’t it?

Maybe it was time. Maybe I should just tell her. If I was dying soon there wasn’t any harm in telling her the truth, was there? But then we might never talk about what I really wanted to talk—

Yes. You’re coming out. Finally. I’ve known for years. I hope that’s not offensive. Not being surprised. What did your father say? I’m sure he was clueless. You and I have always had a much stronger bond.

I didn’t come out to Dad.

You didn’t? Then why did he call me and leave that message?

Look Mom, I’ve been sick for a really long time. I mean, yes, I’m gay but that’s not what’s important.